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GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...
from White Crane
GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...
from White Crane
Exploring
Gay Wisdom & Culture
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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
MARCH 27
1923 – SARAH BERNHARDT, French actress
died (b. 1844);
Her friendship with Louise Abbema, a French impressionist painter fourteen years her junior, was so close and passionate that
the two women were assumed to be lovers. She later married Greek-born actor
Aristides Damala (known in France as Jacques Damala) in London in 1882, but the marriage, which legally endured until Damala's
death in 1889 at age 34, quickly collapsed, largely due to Damala's dependence on morphine...oh
and his being a homosexual. During the latter years of this marriage, Bernhardt
was said to have been involved in an affair with the Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII. Can we say
“la publicité”? Bernhardt was not known to be a religious person, and once stated,
"Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist."
1929 – KATHARINE LEE BATES,
American poet (b. 1859); Sure to make the Radical Right's heads
explode, the author of the words to the anthem "American the Beautiful"
was a Lesbian. Bates was
born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The daughter of a
Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley in 1880 and for many
years was a professor of English
literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member
of the
newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social
sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she
also
studied. She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a
history and political economy teacher and
founder of the Wellesley College Economics department. The pair lived
together
for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. These arrangements
were
sometimes called "Boston marriages" or "Wellesley marriages.". The
1999 play Boston Marriage by David Mamet depicts such a marriage as
having an explicitly sexual component. In 2004 Massachusetts became the
first state in the U.S. to allow legal same-sex marriages, which makes
Boston the only major city in the U.S. where a "Boston
marriage" can also be a legal marriage, if the couple wishes it to be.
1952 – MARIA SCHNEIDER, French actress,
born; The talented actress, who claims
to be the illegitimate daughter of
French star Daniel Gelin, played opposite Marlon Brando, as it were, in
Last Tango in Paris. For several days in 1975 there was a great deal of heavy
breathing in tabloids all over the world when Schneider, declaring the “right
to be insane,” checked into a Rome mental hospital so she could be near her
committed lover, American heiress, Patty Townsend. Then the tumult died down.
And her name started to disappear from most of the standard reference books.
Isn’t that strange?
1973 – NOEL COWARD, English
composer and playwright died (b. 1899); All I can say is run, don’t walk, to your local
bookstore, and buy The Letters of Noel Coward, Barry Day (Knopf/ISBN-10:
0375423036. A fascinating, sharp and prolific mind.
Coward
was gay and never married, but he maintained close personal
friendships with many women. These included actress and author Esme
Wynne-Tyson, his
first collaborator and constant correspondent; the designer and lifelong
friend Gladys Calthrop; secretary
and close confidante Lorn Loraine; his muse, the gifted musical actress
Gertrude Lawrence; actress Joyce Carey; compatriot of his middle period,
the light comedy actress Judy Campbell; and (in the words of Cole
Lesley) 'his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse', film star Marelene Dietrich.
He
was a valued friend of Vivien Leigh, Gene Tierney, Judy Garland, Elaine
Stritch, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. He
was a
close friend of Ivor Novello and Winston Churchill. Coward's insights into the class system can be traced
back to London life in World War I, when thousands of troops passed through the
capital every day, and Gay officers and other ranks met civilians in dozens of
highly secret clubs.
He enjoyed a 19-year relationship with Prince George Duke
of Kent and another lengthy one with the stage and film actor, Graham Payn, for
almost 30 years until his death. Payn later co-edited with Sheridan Morley the
collection of his diaries, published in 1982. He was also connected to composer
Ned Rorem, with details of their relationship published in Rorem's diaries.
A man and no less a product of his times (and his own
imagination, to be sure) and exquisitely attuned to those times, Coward refused
to acknowledge his sexuality, wryly stating, "There is still a woman in Paddington Square who wants to marry me, and I
don't want to disappoint her." From his youth Coward had a distaste for
penetrative sex and held the modern gay scene in disdain. This disdain, we have
to believe is merely a symptom of an era, rather than a matter of character, and
something he would have rethought had he been born in another time. His evident
innate sense of honor and what is right would have, one has to infer, brought
him around.
2011 – American actor and
star of Strangers on A Train and Rope FARLEY GRANGER died (b: 1925). Granger had one of the more prolific careers
in Hollywood, but he is most closely associated with Alfred Hitchcock as a
result of these two films.
Making the film The North Star proved to be a fortunate start to Granger's career.
He enjoyed working with director Milestone and fellow cast members Dana
Andrews, Teresa Wright, Walter Brennan and Jane Withers, and during filming he
met composer Aaron Copeland, who remained a friend in later years. When
released, the film was ravaged by critics working for newspapers owned by
William Randolph Hearts, a staunch anti-Communist who felt the movie was Soviet
propaganda.
For Granger's next film, he was loaned out to
20th Century Fox, where Darryl F. Zanuck cast him in The Purple Heart, in which he was
directed by Milestone and again co-starred with Dana Andrews. Granger become
close friends with supporting cast member Sam Levene, a character actor from
New York who took him under his wing (ahhhh…the old “take him under his wing”
move…) He also became friends with Roddy McDowell (no word about Roddy’s wing) and
found himself linked with June Haver in gossip columns in fan magazines. This
was one busy boy.
Upon completion of The Purple Heart,
Granger enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Following training in Idaho, he sailed from
Treasure Island in San Francisco to Honolulu. During the 17-day crossing, he
suffered from chronic seasickness, lost 23 pounds, and upon arrival in Hawaii
he was admitted to the hospital for several days of rehydration. As a result,
the remainder of his military career was spent onshore, where he first was
assigned to an enlisted men's club situated at the end of Waikiki Beach and
then to a unit commanded by classical actor Maurice Evans, where he had the
opportunity to meet and mingle with visiting entertainers such as Bob Hope,
Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr and Gertrude Lawrence.
It was during his naval stint in Honolulu
that Granger says he had his first sexual experiences (I guess Sam Levene’s
wings don’t really count), one with a hostess at a private club and the other
with a handsome Naval officer visiting the same venue, both on the same night. Ahhh
youth.
He was startled to discover he was attracted
to both men and women equally and in his memoir he observed, "I finally
came to the conclusion that for me, everything I had done that night was as
natural and as good as it felt . . . I never have felt the need to belong to
any exclusive, self-defining, or special group . . . I was never ashamed, and I
never felt the need to explain or apologize for my relationships to anyone . .
. I have loved men. I have loved women."
Granger's
next two films for Goldwyn, Edge of Doom
and Our Very Own, were unpleasant
working experiences, and the actor refused to allow the producer to loan him to
Universal Pictures for an inferior magic carpet saga. When he was placed on
suspension, he decided to accompany Ethyl Chaplin, who had separated from her
husband, and her daughter on a trip to Paris. At the last moment they were
joined by Arthur Laurents who remained behind when the group departed for
London to see the opening of the New York City Ballet, which had been
choreographed by Jerome Robbins.
He
and Granger engaged in a casual affair until the actor was summoned to return
to New York to help publicize Our Very Own and Edge of Doom, both
of which received dreadful reviews. Goldwyn cancelled the nationwide openings
of the latter, hoping to salvage it by adding wraparound scenes that would
change the focus of the film, and Granger refused to promote it any further.
Once again placed on suspension, he departed for Europe, where he spent time in Italy, Austria
and Germany with Laurents before being contacted about an upcoming film by
Alfred Hitchcock.
In Rope, Granger and John Dall
portrayed two highly intelligent friends who commit a thrill killing simply to
prove they can get away with it. The two characters and their former professor,
played by Jimmy Stewart, were supposed to be gay, and Granger and Dall
discussed the subtext of their scenes, but because The Hays Office was keeping
close tabs on the project, the final script was so discreet that Laurents
remained uncertain of whether Stewart ever realized that his own character was
gay.
Hitchcock shot the film in continuous,
uninterrupted ten-minute takes, the amount of time a reel of Technicolor film lasted, and as a result
technical problems frequently brought the action to a frustrating halt
throughout the twenty-one day shoot. The film ultimately received mixed
reviews, although most critics were impressed by Granger, who in later years
said he was happy to be part of the experience, but wondered "what the
film would have been like had [Hitchcock] shot it normally" and "had
he not had to worry about censorship."
Upon the completion of Rope, Goldwyn
cast Granger, Teresa Wright, David Niven and Evelyn Keyes in Enchantment, which was plagued by a weak
script and indifferent direction. It failed at the box office, as did his next
project, Roseanna McCoy, during which he and Laurents parted ways. While
filming Side Street on location in
Manhattan, Granger briefly became involved with Leonard Bernstein, who invited
him to join him on his South American tour. By the time Granger completed the
film, the composer/conductor had married Chilean pianist and actress Felicia
Montealegre. The two men remained friends until Bernstein's death.
Despite three unsuccessful Broadway
experiences, Granger continued to focus on theater in the early 1960s. He
accepted an invitation from Eva Le Gallienne to join her National Repertory
Theatre. During their first season, while the company was in Philadelphia, John
F. Kennedy was assassinated. The President had attended NRT's opening night and
post-performance gala in the nation's capital, so the news hit everyone in the
company especially hard. Granger had become close friends with production
supervisor Robert Calhoun, and although both had felt a mutual attraction, they
never had discussed it. That night they became lovers.
Granger finally achieved some success on
Broadway in The Seagull, The Crucible,
The Glass Menagerie and Deathtrap.
He starred opposite Barbara Cook in a revival of The King and I at the off-Broadway New York City Center and in 1979
he was cast in the Roundabout Theater Company production of A Month in The Country. In 1986 he won
the Obie Award for his performance in the Lanford Wilson play Talley & Son.
In
the early 1970s, Granger and Calhoun moved to Rome, where the actor made a
series of Italian language films, most notably They Call Me Trinity. He also appeared on several soap operas,
including One Life to Live, on which
his portrayal of Will Vernon garnered him a nomination for the Daytime Emmy
Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, The Edge of Night and As the
World Turns, produced by Calhoun. In the 1990s, Granger appeared in several
documentaries discussing Hollywood in general and Alfred Hitchcock in
particular. In 1995 he was interviewed on camera for The Celluloid Closet, discussing the depiction of homosexuality in
film and the use of subtext in various films, including his own.
In 2003, Granger made his last film
appearance in Broadway: The Golden Age,
by the Legends Who Were There. In it, he tells the story of leaving
Hollywood at the peak of his fame, buying out his contract from Samuel Goldwyn,
and moving to New York City to work on the Broadway stage.
In
2007, Granger published the memoir Include
Me Out, co-written with his life partner Robert Calhoun. In the book, named
after one of Goldwyn's famous malapropisms, he freely discusses his career and
personal life. Calhoun died of lung cancer in New York City on May 24, 2008, at
age 77.
2011 - American painter GEORGE TOOKER (nee George
Clair Tooker, Jr. died on this date (b: 1920)
Tooker
was a figurative painter associated with the Magic Realism movement and with
the Social Realism movement as well. He was one of nine recipients of the
National Medal of Arts during 2007.
In 1943 he began studying at the Art Students
League of New York. Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Miller were two of his
teachers at the ASL. Early in his career Tooker was often compared with other
painters such as Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper and his friends Jared French and
Paul Cadmus who introduced him to working with the then-revitalized tradition
of egg-tempera. Tooker addressed issues of modern-day alienation with subtly
eerie and often visually literal depictions of social withdrawal and isolation.
Subway (1950; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC) and Government
Bureau (1956; Metropolitan Museum of Art) are two of his best-known
paintings.
With his life partner, William Christopher,
Tooker moved into a loft on West 18th Street in Manhattan, making
custom furniture to supplement his art income. By the late 1940s he had
developed his mature style and settled on the themes that would engage him for
the rest of his life: love, death, sex, grief, aging, alienation and faith.
Working in rural Vermont after 1960, he produced two to four paintings a year.
In true “interpretor” and “jester” same-sex, archetypical
form, Tooker’s magical images were drawn from mundane experiences and
transformed into commentary. The bureaucratic shuffle he experienced when
trying to get city permits to remodel a house in Brooklyn Heights led to his
“Government Bureau” painting. One of his best known works, it depicts
disconsolate supplicants being stared at, impassively, by workers behind
frosted glass partitions, only their noses and eyes visible.
Mr. Williams died in 1973, in Spain, where
the two men had been living for six years, plunging Tooker into a spiritual
crisis that he resolved by embracing Roman Catholicism. In his later works, he
often addressed religions themes, notably in “The Seven Sacraments”, an
altarpiece he produced for the church of St Francis of Assisi in Windsor,
Vermont.
He was elected to the National Academy of
Design during 1968 and he is a member of The American Academy of Arts and
Letters. During 2007, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Tooker lived
for many years in Hartland, Vermont.
TODAY’S GAY WISDOM
From
The Letters of Noel Coward by
Barry Day (Knopf/ISBN-10:
0375423036)
An
excerpt from two letters to his personal secretary, Lorn Loraine:
“Now
I have to go and discuss drearily with Miss [Gertrude] Lawrence the macabre
possibility of her doing a revival of To-night
at What Have You. I shall continue – like the Perils of Pauline --
to-morrow. In the mean time I must think of something to say to finish off this
page.
Buggerbuggerbuggerbugger.
That is enough. I am very pretty – I am very pretty – I am very pretty. That is
better.
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Grand
Hotel
Khartoum
January
29th 1944
Darling
Lornie,
…At 5 o’clock that afternoon we arrived in
Accra … it was surprisingly cool and very White Man’s Burden indeed. Lots of
large gentlemen in shorts carrying golf clubs just having had a “bit of a go of
Malaria.” From there I flew to Lagos in Nigeria which is the real school books
tropics. Natives, coal black, in vivid colours, lush vegetation, palms,
bananas, orchids, hibiscus, snakes, scorpions, Tze Tze flies, infantile
paralysis, Blackwater Fever, Gumboils, crabs (imported naturally), moths as big
as your titties, bugs, fleas and beetles. There was also Nelson Eddy but I
missed him by a day. There was what is known as a “Hammatan” blowing which is a
hot dusty wind from the Sahara – it must be a keen traveler for the Sahara is
about two thousand miles away – anyhow it makes flying very tricky so, having
dragged myself awake at five in the morning, the plane wouldn’t take off.
However, another much larger one thought that it would so off I went across Equatorial
Africa. I spent the night at a place called Maidugeri which offers to obvious
rhyming possibilities. There there were nothing but rather attractive mud
houses and very, very black people indeed with very long things hanging down in
front, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t, Winnie is sure to. …
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